hingly, "you are out of sorts, and can't see
things in their right light. I'll lend you fifty dollars more, making
the debt two hundred dollars."

"I don't see how that will help me."

"I'll tell you. You must win the money to pay your debt at the gaming
table. Why, two hundred dollars is a trifle. You might win it in one
evening."

"Or lose as much more."

"There's no such word as fail! Shall I tell you what I did once?"

"Yes," answered Mullins, in some curiosity.

"I was in Nashville--dead broke! I was younger then, and losses
affected me more. I was even half inclined--you will laugh, I know--to
blow my brains out or to throw myself into the river, when a stranger
offered to lend me ten dollars to try my luck again. Well, I thought as
you did, that it was of little use. I would lose it, and so make
matters worse.

"But desperation led me to accept. It was one chance, not a very good
one, but still a chance. From motives of prudence I only risked five
dollars at first. I lost. Savagely I threw down the remaining five and
won twenty-five. Then I got excited, and kept on for an hour. At the
end of that time, how do you think I stood?"

"How?" asked Mullins, eagerly.

"I had won eight hundred and sixty-five dollars," answered Dick
Ralston, coolly. "I paid back the ten dollars, and went out of the
gambling house a rich man, comparatively speaking."

Now, all this story was a clever fiction, but David Mullins did not
know this. He accepted it as plain matter of fact, and his heart beat
quickly as he fancied himself winning as large a sum.

"But such cases must be rare," he ventured.

"Not at all. I could tell you more wonderful stories about friends of
mine, though it was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. Now,
will you take the fifty dollars I offered you?"

"Yes, but I don't want to play again to-night. I feel nervous."

"Very good. Meet me to-morrow evening at the gambling house, and the
money shall be ready for you."

Then they parted, and the bookkeeper, who had a headache, went home and
to bed. He had that evening lost fifty dollars to Dick Ralston, and so
increased his debt from one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars.

But his heart was filled with feverish excitement. The story told by
Ralston had its effect upon him, and he decided to keep on in the
dangerous path upon which he had entered. Why pinch himself for five
months to pay his debt, when a single evening's luck would cl